April 8, 2024
By Minseo Kim
On March 14, local time, Space X, Elon Musk's space exploration company, succeeded in landing the rocket "Starship" into orbit. It was half successful in its third test launch, and attention is paid to whether Musk's final goal of human migration to Mars will come true.
Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built by manpower, measuring 120 meters in length, reaching 40 stories high in an apartment building, and its thrust is more than 25 times higher than that of the S. Korea-made projectile Nuri. It can carry more than 100 people and up to 150 tons of cargo, not just about five people as it used to be. It can also be reused by bringing the rocket back to Earth. Expectations rise that it will save launch costs.
Starship will also be deployed to NASA's moon mission, Artemis 3, which is scheduled for 2026, and Musk is looking at the bigger goal of moving people by building a city on Mars beyond moon exploration. If humans continue to live on Earth, extinction is inevitable; and Mars, the most likely planet in the solar system to be habitable, must be pioneered. Musk expects 2029 to be the first time humans can set foot on Mars and plans to settle 1 million people on Mars by 2050 in transporting people and goods with Starship.
On the other hand, there are challenges left before the success of Starship. More stable launch and rocket recovery must be successful. This is because the rocket was unable to withstand heat as it re-entered the atmosphere and returned to Earth. Musk also stated that a million tons of cargo must be sent for humans to settle on Mars. Some watchers point out that the plan itself is unreasonable in the first place because tens of thousands of Starship launches, which take more than 200 days at a time, must be carried out.
Some say that people should focus on the global climate crisis rather than migrating to Mars. Just as no one would want to live in a barren Martian environment like the one in the movie "The Martian," there are still more doubts remaining.
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